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Astana at it again! Film on women’s cycling! Brek Epic truly gets epic!

Maxim Iglinskiy is one of four Kazakh Astana riders to be popped for doping. Yet the team has been cleared to ride in 2015. (Proteam-Astana.com)
Expert
20th November, 2014
1

Lots of exclamation marks in that title but they were a necessity, not a luxury, because all three of these topics – in what has been a decidedly slow week in cycling – deserve them!

First up is Astana. Or Satan-A, if you want to get all biblical and dark with your anagrams.

Unbelievably, yet another Astana rider has been busted for doping. Victor Okishev is just 20 and got pinched for steroid abuse at a race in May.

Well at least he isn’t from Kazakhstan as the other three on the team were – oh wait, yes, he is.

Surely this is one that even Alexandre ‘Teflon’ Vinokourov can’t squirm out of. The UCI were said to have been mulling over throwing Astana out, and have requested a hearing with regards to the Kazakh team’s World Tour license.

It has come to the point where if the world cycling governing body do not throw Astana out, they will be heading to the land of negative integrity.

Vinokourov, who was allegedly last seen buying Spanish beef ‘just in case’ in Andalucia, has not commented yet but perhaps he is wondering, as I am, if the example he set as the two-wheeled hero of his nation who got busted but stayed rich, famous and loved, has played a hugely significant role in a bunch of his compatriots doing exactly the same thing – or not.

Hmmmm.

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Next up is a rather good film on women’s bike racing. That’s right, women do race bicycles!

In case you’ve forgotten, a woman is a human being, about yay tall, that can speak, think and generally move about like men, give birth, unlike men, and give their all in competition just like men.

Their parents (perhaps there are some of you out there) generally want them to be the best they can be, just like parents do for their sons.

Something like 50 per cent of the population of the planet are women. That means a lot of potential cyclists and a lot of potential bike sales, but this isn’t always considered.

Instead, women find themselves largely ignored by cycling authorities and very much treated like second-class citizens.

People complain that women do not deserve equal pay with men, yet they ignore the fact that women in cycling are so largely underpaid, the development of their sport underfunded, and the head of the UCI traditionally unconvinced of the validity of their whole endeavour, that very few women are attracted to cycling as a result, meaning that very few women start racing at all.

I interviewed Nicole Cooke (World, Olympic, Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and Flanders champion) recently and she had this to say when I asked her why women should receive the same pay as men:

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Because a woman who gives her all cannot give anymore. It comes down to how society values men and women. The norms in society do value men as superior in so many walks of life, for example in the wage gap. So many of these, all across society, are wrong. They shouldn’t be like that.

But equal prize money, again that is something that the UCI has to take the lead on in terms of national and world championships.

All of this stuff about ‘oh well the riders aren’t there and the races aren’t there’ – well give them the opportunity. Give it five years of equal prize money and then I’m sure women will say ‘Yes, sport can be a career path where I am taken seriously.’

For a lot of aspirational girls and young women, they look at sport, particularly cycling, and think ‘Well that’s a joke. Why would I put all that effort in to get no rewards when I can do something else and be rewarded more fairly?’

So yeah, that’s where I sit with regards to this.

Which brings us niftily to this new film out about women’s cycling. It’s good. It’s called ‘Half The Road’.

It’s not easy, getting equal pay for women in events. I know, because I help organise a race where we have yet to achieve this. In our case, it’s a case of both working on the sponsors to get them to see the value in that and in getting enough women to enter the race in the first place.

Third on the list is the Breck Epic MTB stage race from California.

Earlier today I opened my Twitter account to see that race organiser Mike McCormack had sent out a tweet that read:

Rule #1 (subsection 1): are you now serving or have you ever served a USADA or WADA suspension? Yes? You’re out. #simple.

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How great is that? One of North America’s and indeed the world’s most high profile and established mountain bike races now has a zero-tolerance policy.

Some may call it self-righteous, as indeed was the response from a handful when I announced the same policy for the Taiwan KOM Challenge.
However these comments miss the point.

What point? We are cyclists too, and these regulations reflect the desire of the vast majority of cyclists to tackle doping in a meaningful way. Otherwise we would not bring them in, simple as.

Could this be the start of a quiet revolution? Who knows.

Should it be toasted? Hell yes.

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Follow Lee on Twitter: @crankpunk101

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